Alternate Title: Legal Dataset of State Provisions Regulating Use of Mobile Communication Devices by Drivers, as of April 1, 2012

Principal Investigator(s):
Temple University Beasley School of Law

Summary:

This project compiled state and District of Columbia laws regulating the use of mobile communication devices (MCD) by individuals operating motor vehicles and coded some of the laws' features in a data file.
The data file contains information about prohibitions against talking or texting on a MCD for different groups of drivers:
16 year old drivers with provisional or beginner licenses
All 16 year old drivers
17 year old drivers with provisional or beginner licenses
All 17 year old drivers
18 year old drivers with provisional or beginner licenses
All 18 year old drivers
All drivers with provisional or beginner licenses
All drivers
For each of these groups, the coded features include the date each provision against talking or texting on a MCD went into effect, whether there is hands-free exception to the prohibition, whether there is a primary or secondary method of enforcement, and the minimum and maximum fines for the first, second, and third violations. The data file is structured so that each record reflects the coded features of relevant law at a given month. Thus, every state and the District of Columbia has 144 records in the file, one for each month from January 2000 to December 2011.
A separate PDF file contains the text of the laws.

This project compiled state and District of Columbia laws regulating the use of mobile communication devices (MCD) by individuals operating motor vehicles and coded some of the laws' features in a data file.

The data file contains information about prohibitions against talking or texting on a MCD for different groups of drivers:

16 year old drivers with provisional or beginner licenses

All 16 year old drivers

17 year old drivers with provisional or beginner licenses

All 17 year old drivers

18 year old drivers with provisional or beginner licenses

All 18 year old drivers

All drivers with provisional or beginner licenses

All drivers

For each of these groups, the coded features include the date each provision against talking or texting on a MCD went into effect, whether there is hands-free exception to the prohibition, whether there is a primary or secondary method of enforcement, and the minimum and maximum fines for the first, second, and third violations. The data file is structured so that each record reflects the coded features of relevant law at a given month. Thus, every state and the District of Columbia has 144 records in the file, one for each month from January 2000 to December 2011.

A separate PDF file contains the text of the laws.

Access Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public.
Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

Study Description

Citation

Temple University Beasley School of Law. Public Health Law Research Distracted Driving Laws Dataset, 2000-2011. ICPSR34551-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-05-07. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34551.v1

The data file was created by staff at the National Program Office for Public Health Law Research.

Methodology

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: